The Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Ross Gibbs is delighted to announce the acquisition of a key document in connection with the sinking of HMAS Sydney.

‘The photographic prints of a document believed to be the encoded notebook confiscated from Commander T A Detmers, captain of the HSK Kormoran, giving an account of the action between the Kormoran and HMAS Sydney on 19 November 1941 have been presented to the Archives’, Mr Gibbs said.

‘Up until now the Archives did not possess either the original or a copy of Detmers’ encoded notebook in the collection of Australian Government archival records that are known to exist on the sinking of HMAS Sydney ’, he said.

‘We are extremely grateful to Maria Hehir for her generosity in lending the Archives photographic prints of a document believed to be Detmers’ Action Report of the battle with the Sydney, and to David Mearns (Director, Blue Water Recoveries, England) and Captain Peter Hore (naval historian and author) for respectively facilitating and decoding the archive’, Mr Gibbs said.

Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the record is a tale of not only generosity but good fortune as well.

Mearns received a copy of the document from a Sydney researcher who in turn had received it from Maria Hehir, daughter of former Australian Intelligence Corps officer, Captain John Leslie Hehir following its confiscation from Captain Detmers. Hehir commanded the unit that captured Detmers. It appears that the original notebook was destroyed or lost while in the possession of Captain Hehir during the Wangaratta floods of 1974.

‘When a copy of the notebook landed on my desk I realised that it was a document of national importance to Australia and needed to be tracked down and placed in the National Archives’, Mearns said.

A digital copy of the new document together with information and links to archival sources can be found at HMAS Sydney resources.